Monday, June 22, 2009

According to the above link accessed today, Obama received a whopping 47 percent of total monies given to Democrats and Republicans by the Pharmaceuticals/Health Products. We would trust this guy to rebuild health care?

The Democrats won't get it right...they've tried before, and failed miserably and memorably. We need a true revolution, not one backed by the same hegemonic forces they are supposedly trying to overthrow.

America’s political scene has changed immensely since the last time a Democratic president tried to reform health care. So has the health care picture: with costs soaring and insurance dwindling, nobody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change.

The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

The polls suggest that hardly anyone does. Voters, it seems, strongly favor a universal guarantee of coverage, and they mostly accept the idea that higher taxes may be needed to achieve that guarantee. What’s more, they overwhelmingly favor precisely the feature of Democratic plans that Republicans denounce most fiercely as “socialized medicine” — the creation of a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers.

Or to put it another way, in effect voters support the health care plan jointly released by three House committees last week, which relies on a combination of subsidies and regulation to achieve universal coverage, and introduces a public plan to compete with insurers and hold down costs.

Yet it remains all too possible that health care reform will fail, as it has so many times before.

I’m not that worried about the issue of costs. Yes, the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost estimates for Senate plans were higher than expected, and caused considerable consternation last week. But the fundamental fact is that we can afford universal health insurance — even those high estimates were less than the $1.8 trillion cost of the Bush tax cuts. Furthermore, Democratic leaders know that they have to pass a health care bill for the sake of their own survival. One way or another, the numbers will be brought in line.

The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around “centrist,” by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.

What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

Mr. Nelson softened his stand after reform advocates began a public campaign targeting him for his position on the public option.

And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota offers a perfectly circular argument: we can’t have the public option, because if we do, health care reform won’t get the votes of senators like him. “In a 60-vote environment,” he says (implicitly rejecting the idea, embraced by President Obama, of bypassing the filibuster if necessary), “you’ve got to attract some Republicans as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together, and that, I don’t believe, is possible with a pure public option.”

Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

But this fantasy can’t be allowed to stand in the way of giving America the health care reform it needs. This time, the alleged center must not hold.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The following is written under the headline: 'Swine' flu a headache for pork producers.Ah, poor pig killers! I bet it is not as much a "headache" for them as it is/was for the slaughtered animals in the photographs.

*******************************************

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- The disease that most people in the United States and worldwide have come to know as "swine flu" has caused a less-publicized rumbling among the nation's hog farmers and producers.

China and Russia have banned imports from some U.S. states and Mexico, and stock prices for the nation's leading pork companies, Smithfield Foods Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc., took a hit. In addition, hog futures took a rare dive after initial news of the outbreak broke.

The negative news, seen in a market that had already been suffering, is something the industry says could have been prevented had a more accurate name been chosen for the human disease.

"This flu is being called something that it isn't, and it's hurting our entire industry," said Dave Warner, communications director for the National Pork Producers Council. "It is not a 'swine' flu, and people need to stop calling it that ... they're ruining people's lives."

Warner said exact dollar figures on the pork industry's losses nationwide are not yet available. But he pointed out that the industry was already suffering before the flu outbreak.

"The real issue is that anything is bad now because producers for the past 19 months have already lost money," Warner said. "On average they've lost about 20 dollars a pig. So even if they lose two dollars more, it's hard on them.

"I've had producers say, 'Look, we're dying out here, already we're hurting and now this on top of it.' " Video Watch a pig farmer talk of hard times »

Brian Buhr is a professor at the University of Minnesota whose emphasis is in livestock markets. He says that pork is a $1.8 billion industry annually in Minnesota.

On Tuesday of this week, Buhr said, the state's pork industry took an $18 million hit.

Minnesota is the nation's third-largest pig farming state, and its health experts said Wednesday they would be calling the illness "H1N1 novel flu" from here on out.

"In order not to have a negative effect on our industry -- especially under this crisis situation -- we decided to call it 'novel flu' from now on," said Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for health.

The World Health Organization announced Thursday it would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. WHO will instead refer to the illness as "H1N1 influenza A." Map: Where the flu is today »

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to CNN that it would begin officially calling this particular influenza strain "H1N1." However, the CDC's Web site is still largely "swine"-centered, and the media continue to discuss "swine flu" -- much to the dismay of the hog industry.

"There's a large concern over the name [from the hog farmers' perspective], said David Preisler, executive director of the Minnesota Pork Producers' Association. "They just wanted it to be accurate."

Professor Marie Gramer's primary focus is swine disease at the University of Minnesota, and she says "H1N1" is a more appropriate label for this flu, because it's important to remember that a direct link from a pig to a human has not been established.

"Swine flu" was "an unfortunate name for everybody involved in swine production, implying that the pigs were the source of this current outbreak," Gramer said.

Peter Davies, professor of epidemiology and swine medicine at the University of Minnesota, said the name "swine flu" had the potential to be misleading -- and that we've already seen the negative effects.

"We've seen a huge drop in the price of pork," Davies said. "We've seen a lot of interruptions to commerce."advertisement

He added that even though the name has changed from officially being called "swine flu," it may be too little, too late for the industry.

"I think it'll take quite a while, if at all, before it trickles into the media or in the general public's conversation."

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Examining the way the world's population massively imprisons, tortures, and kills animals in inhumane and unnatural conditions, can we say that this actually surprises us? Factory farms breed viruses and bacteria. And with the way they feed the animals antibiotics et al it is NOT surprising that we get killer drug-resistant illnesses from them.

Hey! You want to save the world? Be a true political radical? Be green? Do what's best for yourself and everybody else on the planet? Go vegan, the only true "Green" lifestyle. Don't give me excuses and platitudes, "I only eat free-range, organic blah blah..." You are still killing, imprisoning, torturing. See what happens.

Also:http://www.peta.org/feat-climate-change.asp

From the AP:

WHO Chief: Swine Flu Has "Pandemic Potential"

MARK STEVENSON | April 25, 2009 10:58 PM EST | AP

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's president assumed new powers Saturday to isolate people infected with a deadly swine flu strain as authorities struggled to contain an outbreak that world health officials warned could become a global epidemic.

New cases of swine flu were confirmed in Kansas and California and suspected in New York City. But officials said they didn't know whether the New York cases were the strain that now has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and likely sickened 1,324 since April 13, according to figures updated late Saturday by Mexico's health secretary.

Tests have confirmed swine flu as the cause of death in 20 of the cases.

Mexican soldiers and health workers patrolled airports and bus stations as they tried to corral people who may be infected with the swine flu, as it became clearer that the government may have been slow to respond to the outbreak in March and early April.

Now, even detaining the ill may not keep the strain _ a combination of swine, bird and human influenza that people may have no natural immunity to _ from spreading, epidemiologists say.

The World Health Organization on Saturday asked countries around the world to step up reporting and surveillance of the disease and implement a coordinated response to contain it.

Two dozen new suspected cases were reported in Mexico City alone, where authorities suspended schools and all public events until further notice. More than 500 events, including concerts and sports games, were canceled in the metropolis of 20 million.

Mexican authorities ordered schools closed in the capital and the states of Mexico and San Luis Potosi until May 6, and the Roman Catholic Church announced the cancellation of Sunday masses in the capital.Story continues below

The Mexican government issued a decree authorizing President Felipe Calderon to invoke special powers letting the Health Department isolate patients and inspect homes, incoming travelers and baggage. But officials said it was designed to free health workers from possible legal reprisals and to speed disease control efforts.

A team from the Centers for Disease Control had arrived in Mexico to help set up detection testing for the swine flu strain, something Mexico previously lacked.

The U.S. Embassy said the U.S. has not imposed travel constraints to and from Mexico but is suspending the processing of visas and other services through Wednesday to avoid creating crowds.

It issued an earlier message advising U.S. citizens to avoid large crowds, shaking hands, greeting people with a kiss or using the subway.

While suspected swine flu cases have been reported in about 16 Mexican states, Health Secretary Jose Cordova said "it has not spread to the entire country."

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the outbreak of the never-before-seen virus has "pandemic potential." But she said it is still too early to tell if it would become a pandemic.

WHO lays out three criteria necessary for a global epidemic: The virus is able to infect people, can readily spread person-to-person and the global population has no immunity to it.

Early detection and treatment are key to stopping any outbreak. WHO guidance calls for isolating the sick and blanketing everyone around them with anti-viral drugs such as Tamiflu.

Now, with patients showing up all across Mexico and its teeming capital, simple math suggests that kind of response is impossible.

Mexico appears to have lost valuable days or weeks in detecting the new virus.

Health authorities started noticing a threefold spike in flu cases in late March and early April, but they thought it was a late rebound in the December-February flu season.

Testing at domestic labs did not alert doctors to the new strain, and Cordova acknowledged Mexican labs lacked the necessary profiling data to detect the previously unknown strain.

The first death occurred in southern Oaxaca state on April 13, but Mexico didn't send the first of 14 mucous samples to the CDC until April 18, around the same time it dispatched health teams to hospitals looking for patients with severe flu or pnuemonia-like symptoms.

Those teams noticed something strange: The flu was killing people aged 20 to 40. Flu victims are usually either infants or the elderly. The Spanish flu pandemic, which killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults.

Even though U.S. labs detected the swine flu in California and Texas before last weekend, Mexican authorities as recently as Wednesday were referring to it as a late-season flu.

But mid-afternoon Thursday, Mexico City Health Secretary Dr. Armando Ahued said, officials got a call "from the United States and Canada, the most important laboratories in the field, telling us this was a new virus."

"That was what led us to realize it wasn't a seasonal virus ... and take more serious preventative measures," Cordova said.

Asked why there were so many deaths in Mexico, and none so far among the 11 cases in the United States, Cordova noted that the U.S. cases involved children _ who haven't been among the fatal cases in Mexico, either.

"There are immune factors that are giving children some sort of defense, that is the only explanation we have," he said.

Another factor may be that some Mexican patients may have delayed seeking medical help too long, Cordova said.

Some Mexicans suspected the government had been less than forthcoming. "They always make a big deal about good things that happen, but they really try to hide anything bad," Mexico City paralegal Gilberto Martinez said.

Airports around the world were screening travelers from Mexico for flu symptoms. But containing the disease may not be an option.

"Anything that would be about containing it right now would purely be a political move," said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota pandemic expert.

Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals.

This swine flu and regular flu can have similar symptoms _ mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some of the U.S. victims who recovered also experienced vomiting and diarrhea. But unlike with regular flu, humans don't have natural immunity to a virus that includes animal genes _ and new vaccines can take months to bring into use.

A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the CDC, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.

Mexican authorities did lay to rest one persistent doubt, after Mexican museum director Felipe Solis died this week, just days after accompanying U.S. President Barack Obama on a tour of National Anthropology Museum on April 16. Cordova said Solis had a pre-existing illness and died of pneumonia unrelated to influenza.

___

Associated Press Writers David Koop in Mexico City; Frank Jordans in Geneva; Mike Stobbe in Atlanta; Malcolm Ritter in New York; and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.